Buckhurst Park is an English country house and landscaped park in Withyham, East Sussex. It is the seat of William Sackville, 11th Earl De La Warr. [1]
The house is a Grade II listed building, [2] and is open to the public. [3] The park, landscaped by Humphry Repton, is Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. There are formal gardens which were laid out by Edwin Lutyens and planted by Gertrude Jekyll. [4]
In the year 1086, according to the 11th Earl De La Warr, Buckhurst formed part of an estate that was recorded in the Domesday Book as belonging to "Ralph de Dene (whose grandfather was cupbearer to King Edward the Confessor) that... passed to the Sackville family – Lords Buckhurst, Earls and Dukes of Dorset, and Earls De La Warr – through the marriage of Ralph's descendant, Ela de Dene to Jordan de Sackville in 1140." [3]
The 7th Earl De La Warr, writing in 1857, recorded that a well-built dwelling house and garden had been mentioned in 1274, and that a deer park on the estate was mentioned in the 14th century, during the reign of Edward I. [5]
A land survey of the Barony of Buckhurst in 1597–1598 recorded that Lord Buckhurst's property was divided into two parks: the Great Park of Buckhurst and the Little Park of Buckhurst, which were also called Buckhurst Park and Stonelands Park. [6] The original mansion stood in Buckhurst Park, on 1,150 acres of "land in meadow pasture and wood... [and] for the sustenance and maintenance of deere". [6] Stonelands Park contained 520 wooded acres including Stonelands Lodge, a hunting lodge consisting of a house with a barn and a garden; a relation, Andrew Sackville, resided there as the keeper of the park. [6]
Buckhurst Place, the original manor house, was a grand, partly-moated courtyard house in Buckhurst Park. [7] The beauties of the house and estate in 1579 were praised in a Latin poem by the Scottish academic Hercules Rollock. [8] Buckhurst was the home of the Sackville family until it was vacated in the early 1600s by Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset. [7] [9] Thomas Sackville was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth I through the family of her mother, Anne Boleyn. [7] [10] His court connections resulted in a considerable fortune, enabling him to keep a household staff of at least 220, [11] and to draw up plans for a new and more elaborate mansion on the Buckhurst estate, even prior to his elevation to the titles of Lord Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset. [7]
The building was abandoned by about 1605, after Thomas Sackville removed his family and household from Buckhurst Place to Knole House in Kent, a large palace granted to him by Queen Elizabeth in 1566. [7] [12] [13] Much of Buckhurst Place was pulled down early in the 17th century, and its materials were employed around 1616–1619 to build an almshouse called College for the Poor (now Sackville College) at East Grinstead, leaving the gateway tower as the only remnant standing. [12] [14]
After moving to Knole House, Sackville continued with plans to build a new house at Buckhurst. [7] Construction of the new house, called "Stoneland," was started in 1603, taking the site of Stoneland Lodge, the former hunting lodge in the smaller park. [6] [12] Upon Sackville's death in 1608, his son Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset, reduced the scope of the original plans but continued construction of a substantial mansion, designed as a residence for the steward, with no formal garden. [7] [14]
The residence received considerable additions in the mid-18th century by Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset, who used Stoneland as an occasional summer retreat. [14] The present house is dated to that period; according to the Sussex Record Society, the "former Stoneland Lodge, now called Buckhurst House, [was] built in 1743". [6] : xvii The Duke of Dorset's third son, George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville, took the house as his summer residence until his death in 1785. [14]
The house has since been much remodelled, notably in the early 19th century by an Elizabethan-style renovation for Arabella, Duchess of Dorset and her second husband, Lord Whitworth, who occupied the house and improved both it and the grounds. [15] The Duchess incorporated into the house's grounds a portion of the larger park which had belonged to Buckhurst Place, and discarded the name Stoneland, giving to the entire estate the name Buckhurst Park. [14] [15]
Buckhurst Park was landscaped in 1830–1835 by Humphry Repton, whose landscape plans for the park were embodied in one of his "Red Books", [16] and the remodelling of the house was carried out to designs by his son, John Adey Repton. [17] The Duchess of Dorset also commissioned a lakeside walk of shrubs and ornamental trees, along with a boathouse, from landscape designer Lewis Kennedy, noted for the Empress Josephine's formal gardens at Château de Malmaison. [7]
In the early decades of the 20th century, the estate was leased for over 25 years to Robert Henry Benson (1850–1929), a merchant banker and art collector, who continued to make improvements to the house. [18] [19] Finding the house and grounds very much as Repton had left them, in 1902 he called upon architect Edwin Lutyens to add an extensive wing. [19] [20] Lutyens later credited his decades-long appointment as architect of New Delhi, the grand central area of which is still known as Lutyens' Delhi, to a chance meeting at a country-house party at Buckhurst during Benson's tenure. [21]
The wing added by Lutyens has since been demolished, but a sunken basin opposite its former "New Room" survives, and surrounding gardens by Gertrude Jekyll adjoining it were later carefully recreated from Jekyll's planting plans, rediscovered in a drawer at Buckhurst. [22] Lutyens' preferred Brunswick fig trees also survived the demolition. [23]
As of 2018 [update] , Buckhurst Park is owned by the 11th Earl De La Warr, and is made available to the public for weddings, corporate events, and a variety of outdoor pursuits. [3] Herds of cattle, sheep, and pigs are raised on the estate, [3] and Lady De La Warr is the owner of South Park Stud, which breeds pedigreed Shetland ponies on the estate. [24]
Within the Buckhurst Park estate is the "Hundred Acre Wood," an area that was separated from Ashdown Forest by disafforestation in 1678, when Stoneland was in the possession of Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset. The writer A. A. Milne, who lived nearby at Cotchford Farm, Hartfield, made the Hundred Acre Wood famous as the setting of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
Humphry Repton was the last great designer of the classic phase of the English landscape garden, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown. His style is thought of as the precursor of the more intricate and eclectic styles of the 19th century. His first name is often incorrectly spelt "Humphrey".
Knole is a country house and former archbishop's palace owned by the National Trust. It is situated within Knole Park, a 1,000-acre (400-hectare) park located immediately to the south-east of Sevenoaks in west Kent. The house ranks in the top five of England's largest houses, under any measure used, occupying a total of four acres.
Earl De La Warr is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1761 for John West, 7th Baron De La Warr. The Earl holds the subsidiary titles of Viscount Cantelupe (1761) in the Peerage of Great Britain, Baron De La Warr (1572) in the Peerage of England, and Baron Buckhurst, of Buckhurst in the County of Sussex (1864) in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The barony De La Warr is of the second creation; however, it bears the precedence of the first creation, 1299, and has done so since shortly after the death of William West, 1st Baron De La Warr. The family seat is Buckhurst Park, near Withyham, Sussex.
Baron Sackville, of Knole in the County of Kent, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1876 for the Honourable Mortimer Sackville-West, with remainder, failing heirs male of his body, to his younger brothers the Hon. Lionel and the Hon. William Edward. Sackville-West was the fourth son of George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr and Elizabeth Sackville-West, Countess De La Warr and 1st Baroness Buckhurst, younger daughter and co-heir of John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset. On the death of the latter's cousin, Charles Sackville-Germain, 5th Duke of Dorset, in 1845, the dukedom and its subsidiary titles became extinct and the Sackville estates passed through Elizabeth to the West family who assumed the additional surname of Sackville by Royal licence. By arrangement, Mortimer Sackville-West succeeded to a substantial part of the estates, including Knole in Kent, which is still the seat of the Barons Sackville.
The title Baron Buckhurst has been created twice; once in the Peerage of England and once in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was first created in 1567 for Thomas Sackville, MP for East Grinstead and Aylesbury. He was later created Earl of Dorset in 1604. That creation became extinct in 1843.
Duke of Dorset was a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1720 for the politician Lionel Sackville, 7th Earl of Dorset.
Victoria Josefa Dolores Catalina Sackville-West , was a British noblewoman, mother of the writer, poet, and gardener Vita Sackville-West.
Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset was an English statesman, poet, and dramatist. He was the son of Richard Sackville, a cousin to Anne Boleyn. He was a Member of Parliament and Lord High Treasurer.
Lord Buckhurst is a courtesy title or style used since 1890 by heirs apparent to the title of Earl De La Warr. The style was previously used by heirs apparent to the title of Earl of Dorset.
Withyham is a village and large civil parish in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England. The village is situated 7 miles south west of Royal Tunbridge Wells and 3.5 miles (5.6 km) from Crowborough; the parish covers approximately 7,500 acres (30 km2).
This is a list of people who served as Lord Lieutenant of Sussex. From 1677 until 1974, all Lord Lieutenants were also Custos Rotulorum of Sussex.
Other Archer Windsor, 6th Earl of Plymouth was an English nobleman, the eldest and only surviving son of the 5th Earl of Plymouth by his wife and cousin, Hon. Sarah Archer, daughter and eventual co-heiress of the 2nd Baron Archer. He was the sixth Earl of Plymouth of the 1682 creation.
Elizabeth Sackville-West, Countess De La Warr and 1st Baroness Buckhurst, was a British peeress.
Stratton Park, in East Stratton, Hampshire, was an English country house, built on the site of a grange of Hyde Abbey after the dissolution of the monasteries; it was purchased with the manor of Micheldever in 1546 by Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton. The last earl of Southampton made Stratton Park one of his chief seats, and his son-in-law, Sir William Russell, pulled down part of the hamlet and added it to his deer park in the 1660s. The Russell heirs eventually sold the estate in 1801 to Sir Francis Baring, Bt, of the Baring banking family. Baring remodeled the manor house in a neoclassical style, to designs by George Dance the Younger, 1803–06,' including an imposing stone Doric-columned portico and stuccoed brick main block and wings. The pleasure grounds and landscape park were laid out and planted, starting ca 1803 by Humphry Repton, and described by William Cobbett, in Rural Rides: in the counties of Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hants, when Stratton Park held the living of Micheldever and included Micheldever Wood, which Cobbett said "contains a thousand acres [4 km²], and which is one of the finest oak-woods in England." In the late nineteenth century Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook laid out more formally structured gardens, with hardy plantings by Gertrude Jekyll. The park has been Grade II registered since 1984.
William Herbrand Sackville, 11th Earl De La Warr is a British businessman and peer. He was styled Lord Buckhurst from 1976 until 9 February 1988, when he inherited the earldom.
John Adey Repton (1775–1860) was an English architect.
Charles Richard Sackville-West, 6th Earl De La Warr, styled Lord West following the untimely death of his elder brother thus between 1850 and 1869, was a British soldier officer, rising to major-general for the last 8 years of his life. He was a peer for the last 4+1⁄6 years of his life, as his father died aged 77. After he killed himself, unmarried, the title and main estates including Ashdown Forest and Buckhurst Park, Sussex passed to his brother through whom the title descended.
Reginald Windsor Sackville, 7th Earl De La Warr, styled The Honourable Reginald West until 1843, as The Honourable Reginald Sackville between 1843 and 1870 and known as the Lord Buckhurst between 1870 and 1873, was a British clergyman and landowner.
William Herbrand Sackville, 10th Earl De La Warr was a British peer. He inherited the earldom on 28 January 1976 on the death of his father Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr.
Lady Margaret Sackville, formerly Lady Margaret Howard, was the wife of Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset.